So – updates.There should be pictures also.That’s actually why this took so long – I wanted to post the associated pictures, and I’m really rotten at getting the pictures out of the camera.Also, even when I do, I actually *post* most of these posts from the office, and I don’t have the pictures there.Putting them onto a thumb drive is easy enough, but it adds another layer of things I don’t get around to doing.

Christmas (yes, I’ve been mute for close to a month.)Christmas was pretty much a non event.We went down to my parents’ house for Christmas Eve.My family traditionally opens gifts Christmas Eve night.I think it might be a Polish thing from Grandma Longtin, but I don’t actually know that for certain.Because Charlotte is so little, we didn’t wait until dark like usual – she doesn’t know the difference, and we all go to bed earlier these days.She didn’t really have the hang of unwrapping yet, but she LOVED pulling stuff out of gift bags.Wrapped boxes would have paper ripped off them one tiny scrap at a time.Rip – hand to mom.Rip, hand to mom.You can grow old and die waiting for her to unwrap a present.

At the end of the day, I changed her into pajamas and set her on the kitchen counter to put her coat on. She reached out and snagged a baked potato that was left over from dinner and started to gnaw on it. I could not get that potato away from her for love nor money. That was HER potato. I'm not sure if the texture felt good on the teeth that are coming in, or if she was just enjoying a nutritious snack, but she wouldn't let go. In the category of "choosing my battles," I just let her have it. She worked on that potato from Brookfield to Waterbury, until she finally fell asleep. When I retrieved it from my car, I discovered that she had eaten maybe a quarter of it.

Christmas day we sat with our feet up and watched television. Dinner was frozen pizza because we didn't feel like cooking. It was good.

I've decided that every year I'm going to take a picture of Charlotte in front of the tree in her holiday pj's wearing this santa hat. She's going to LOVE this when she's thirteen... :-)